last noon and last night

last noon i bent my inflexible frame to sit

down on my driveway with my grandson

the little boy, to draw with sidewalk chalk
flowers that never droop, bees that never suck

adding the easy crocodile beside the baby

and endlessly much more that he scribbled
until the energy within tempted him to spill
beyond the safety of my patience, my control

and last night you sent your heavy dark clouds

to completely wipe out our creative expressions
as if getting rid of the monstrous dinosaurs, bad
land creatures, to give space for prickly cacti bed!
 
29.06.2014    

‘lord have mercy’

i, like a feather fallen from an unknown

bird, am drifting alone, blown in an arid terrain
that wilderness of a loveless world
watered, enriched by the scarcity of gold

that mammon, an idol washed and worshipped

with liturgical music, pious rituals, and spiced
with sacred silence, with and without a person
in priestly garb, naming me, victor barren

the wind here fights and battles with emptiness

breathing out the refrain, but occasionally, ‘lord
have mercy’, while the lord of the creation
like Jesus of Nazareth naps on the boat’s stern!

28.06.2014

 

living nightmare

my waking from slumber was too sudden

also, announcing others, my companions
in journey, about the entrance of our train
at the destination, with effects to un-board

before the carriage is shunted to the yard

to be locked for hours, may be for days
before becoming a carrier of another herd
in ride to a distant land, a different moment   

but it was nightmarish to unclutter dream

filled minds, purposeless lives, lumped
in the baggage of laziness with scattered
shoes and stocks of habitual procrastination

24.06.2014

oldest man!

 

to become the oldest man

ever to have lived in this world
is not what i aspire for
but a tranquil and a hard-working
life that i keep yearning for!

let me remain close to those

whose life i can make it brighter
and when i have to leave this world
let my going be swift and painless
to me and those whom i lived for!

while living let my life

be simple as well as my food
including more gorgeous greens
with less of manifold muscular meat
consumed with ceaseless cheer!

in my short life let me not campaign

against the wine that tickle
my soul but never going after
for me and mine, that very same
to sustain their, or my, laughter!

let my mind never settle down

with those who settle self-confidently
with easy answers that repudiate further
probing the well-traveled path
of life’s more complex questions!

04.01.2002

 

untamed buffalo

alone i sit in the cave by the roadside

to the wilderness far beyond the urban
dwellings but i feel no seclusion, unruffled
like a wild buffalo, indifferent to breeze

gentle and the stormy winds making noise

but occasionally turning my head this way
and that side with ready un-readiness to build
my nest, or clean up any mess, mine

or those around through either commission

or omission caused by un-human indifference
to hear, to see, and to feel the pain
of bleeding life in paths much trailed

there neither the silence of the wilderness

nor the singing and dancing and hoarding
of the city invite me, inspire me to rise-up
to walk, to work, to fill, and, at the end, spill!

09.06.2014

 

 

to embrace another i go

hurry! and get to bed, rest to wake

early in the morning with evening
now gone, and the hand of daughter
to someone from far to take away!

for i now need to adopt another daughter

or may be a son for a change in my mood
and to pass on my books, manuscripts
and present pieces to edit with colour!

also to soon entomb my worthless bones

while archiving, for further study, shards
worked and handed in my tongue
by Fabricius, Rhenius, and Henry Bower!

02.06.2014